Save the date !
Fracta Festival, our student-run graduation festival will take place from June 14 to July 5.
About Fracta Festival
Our time as Generation ⅩⅣ at P.A.R.T.S. draws to a close, so we wish to festively look back on our past three years here in Brussels! Fracta Festival is our student-run graduation festival, a last collective moment before leaving P.A.R.T.S. and continuing onto 39 diverging trajectories. We seize this festival as an opportunity to reflect, to further develop our artistic endeavours, and to experiment and celebrate collectively. For the last time, we will fully inhabit the spaces that have surrounded us and wish to leave a trace for those who will pass by after us.
Why Fracta Festival? Fractus, fracta, fractum in Latin means ‘broken’, or in need of repair or rebuilding. We are interested in the state of recovering, of being under construction. Our futures are under construction. Our campus is under construction. We have observed construction; construction sites being spaces of multiplicity, of coexistence, of laying bare what was hidden and invisibilized. Fracta Festival wants to adopt these features, so that it can become a space where traditional settings can coexist with experimental formats, where finished works and works-in-progress can both claim their space. We find it important to resist a capitalistic obsession with the product, and to give political attention to invisible structures of power. Our broken festival can then become something else, something that flourishes in multiple ways, an active, living construction site.
Fracta Festival invites a variety of formats, offering scope and multiplicity. Numerous performances will alternate with workshops and experimental spaces, exhibitions and collective activities, parties and concerts, lectures and leisure.
Coexistence, sensibility and appreciation for each other have been, and remain to be, our core values throughout the process of creating and experiencing Fracta Festival. Our practice of ‘saying yes’ to every proposal has allowed a rich collection of works and events to coexist. We hope to create an environment that encourages curiosity and a variety of approaches. We invite you with the desire to share, with the hope for dynamic exchange and with an openness to receive and be impacted by all of you.
What to expect?
14th and 15th of June - Fracta Festival opens with a collaboration with Van Volxem, an annual event organized by Wiels in which multiple gallery spaces in Fôret open their doors. Our performative works will be shown both in the P.A.R.T.S. building and in a number of those galleries. The next day’s afternoon will be devoted to younger audiences with workshops, performances, a bouncy castle and more, and the evening will host performances and a concert in our garden at P.A.R.T.S.
19th to 22nd of June - The second week of Fracta Festival begins with two performance evenings hosted at P.A.R.T.S., concluding in performances, concerts and a party at Brasserie iLLeGaaL. Our weekend programme dives into our experimental format: RPS OPEN SPACE, a 40 hour event, in which audience/participants become observer, performer, researcher, collaborator, and takes up the collective responsibility of activating and upholding the energy of the space. A sleeping concert will function as a bridge between these two days, hosting movie screenings, live music and a continued moment to further inhabit the space. Alongside this event, there are a variety of workshops taking place in the P.A.R.T.S. building.
27th to 29th of June - The third week of Fracta Festival will take place in Oostende, in collaboration with Dansand! festival. On Friday, student creations and site specific works will be performed in liminal spaces for the duration of the evening. The days following host our graduation piece Choreomania by Mette Ingvartsen, which is performed by all 39 students of Generation ⅩⅣ.
4th to 6th of July - Our final weekend of Fracta Festival consists of two performance evenings and a last day of collective activities and performances. We bring our Festival to a close with an evening at Beursschouwburg, hosting our last performances and culminating in a final party.
In conversation with our ephemeral formats, Fracta Festival will also host more permanent, durational works; exhibitions activated through performative actions or happenings; the Working Tower, an experimental format hosting a permanent, dynamic space for creation in any form, art-and-craft, discussion, spontaneous performances/interventions and a space for observing, activating and reflecting. Before each programme, our space will be open allowing you to visit our installations, exhibitions and impromptu performances and to join us for a drink at the bar where we are excited to exchange and dialogue with you.
We are excited to welcome you during this month of exchange, art and celebration!